What the.....?

Although there has been a lot going on the past few weeks with the Anglican ‘split’, their vote to allow women bishops, the Methodist Conference, Todd Bentley I have not really done much blogging except for Vestry Prayers each week.

I thought perhaps it was time I posted something and there are a number of things that I have read or heard about that make me get very like Victor Meldrew (for readers outside Britain he was a TV character who was very grumpy and was always saying ‘I don’t believe it’).

The first one I came across was about a police force who had used the picture of one of their police dogs on some publicity material and then apologised to members of the Muslim community for any offence it may have caused – I understand that Muslims see dogs as unclean animals but isn’t this rather ridiculous?

Then there was the airport authority advertising for an air traffic controller with 20/20 vision and offering to send the application forms in Braille – I would have thought it was obvious that the majority of people who read Braille most certainly don’t have 20/20 vision and probably have very little or none.

In our local paper this week was the story of a man who was with his wife and two children at an event in one of our biggest parks. His children were on one of these large inflatable slides and he was taking photographs of them – the operator of the slide told him he couldn’t do this and he pointed out he was taking pictures of his own children and that at the point he took the photo they were the only ones on the slide – he even showed the operator the picture – she still insisted he should stop and then another person whose child was using the slide accused him of being a ‘pervert’ because he was taking pictures of children that he might later put on the internet. He went and spoke to two police officers who assured him that taking pictures of his own children was perfectly legal.

Then their was the headmaster at a local school whose fishing licence had expired and there was talk of him being suspended until he had been through the CRB process again because an expired fishing licence is apparently an offence that would flag up on an enhanced CRB check - I am not sure what relevance that has to the persons ability to run a fairly large comprehensive school but I am sure some jobsworth thought it did.

I thought it couldn’t get any worse in the politically correct madness stakes when I came across another story that really makes me think the lunatics have taken over the asylum. A mother with an autistic child accompanies him to school each day in a taxi that is paid for by the local authority and they have now decided that she is technically an ‘escort’ and as such needs to be CRB checked. For goodness sake she is the child’s mother!!

I have a little gripe about one of the local mosques which has a wall that the words ‘There is no other god but Allah’ are built into it in bricks – I find this totally contrary to my own beliefs but I recognise their right to believe something different. I just wonder what would happen if I started a campaign among local Christians to have this ‘offensive’ comment removed – would anything be done, would our views count, would be considered to be racist? I think we all know the answer to that one! (Incidentally I am not planning campaign in case anybody thinks I getting really radical)

Sometimes I wonder if it is me who is mad or just the rest of the world – sense and reality just seems to fly out the window whenever political correctness and equality and diversity are mentioned. I have to say that I do think there are great merits in safeguarding our children and in treating people equally and fairly but surely these things have to be applied with a degree of common sense or they risk being ridiculed and failing. I am sure there is much legislation that was written for good purpose and would be extremely helpful if it were not for people twisting and turning it and applying it with the same sort of zeal that Paul applied to persecuting the early Christians.

I am tempted to quote the title of the 1963 film directed by Stanley Kramer – ‘It’s a mad, mad, mad, mad world’.